NESO Galaxy Battles 2017 Quick Survival Guide

Pro Dota 2 never stops as the pro scene spotlight now shines on China for the NESO Galaxy Battles.

The newest premiere tournament for pro Dota, the Galaxy Battles, is opening its Day 1 in just a few hours, as pro teams battle for the title “Champion of the Galaxy” (okay, we made that up) in China this June.

Revealed earlier this year, the Galaxy Battles is run by China’s NEOTV and is also endorsed by the country’s own National Electronic Sports Open, and will pit 8 teams from the different pro gaming regions – China, South East Asia, Americas, and Europe – for 5 days of pro Dota 2 competition with the winner to take home the lion’s share of the USD 150,000 prize pool.

Participating Teams

For its inaugural year, the NESO Galaxy Battles has handed out 4 Direct Invites to the select top teams of the East and West, well, mostly for the East, with 2 of them going towards China’s Newbee and Invictus Gaming Vitality, with the lone Western team invite going to North American Planet Odd. The Philippine red, white, and blue will be waiving proudly on Chinese territory too as homegrown TNC Pro Team will snatch the last direct invite of the tournament, and will have their new lineup which is now led by 1437 get more major LAN exposure just before TI7.

The other 4 slots will be for the qualifier teams who managed to top their respective participating regions, in the qualifying events that took place just a month ago. North America will have team Infamous as their region qualifier winner, Europe will be sending in mousesports, China’s third participant will come in the form of team ViCi Gaming whereas the SEA slot will be snagged by another Filipino team, HappyFeet.

The Galaxy Battles will be team Happy Feet’s first premiere LAN after their most recent reformation with Jeyo (far right) and JessieVash (far left)

Groups

The NESO Galaxy Battles will be employing the GSL format for their group stage battles, meaning that no team will be eliminated from the group stage regardless of their standing, but rather will have their main event or playoff seeds determined. That being said, the no-team-gets-eliminated factor should not get teams overconfident for winning more games results in an easier Upper Bracket run, whereas having more loses would mean that you would have to struggle in the lower brackets. That being said, here are the official team groupings for the Galaxy Battles Group Stage.

Group A

Newbee

TNC Pro Team Dota 2

ViCi Gaming

mousesports

Group B

Invictus Gaming.Vitality

HappyFeet

Infamous

Planet Odd

Broadcast

Apart from its own Chinese broadcast, the NESO Galaxy Battles will, of course, have an English broadcast team that is composed of various commentary and analytical Dota 2 talent with familiar names such as Andrew “Zyori” Campbell, Alan “Nahaz” Bester and the legendary Shannon “SUNSFAN” Scotten. The Galaxy Battles will also be running the English stream through its very own Twitch channel, although Moonduck TV will also be broadcasting the games, presumably for the other group stage matches.